<The Justice Department has released part of a key internal document used in 2019 to justify not charging President Donald Trump with obstruction, prompting a federal judge who wants to disclose the entire document to offer more blistering criticism of former attorney general William P. Barr.

Two new court filings — one late Monday night and another made public Tuesday — offered details about how Barr ended a possible obstruction case against Trump, and how the department's handling of that politically explosive question has drawn the ire of U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson.

The ongoing fallout from the handling of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings is likely to fuel and frustrate Trump’s biggest critics, particularly Democrats who have long argued that Barr stage-managed an exoneration of Trump after Mueller submitted a 448-page report describing his investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the election, and whether Trump tried to obstruct that investigation.

[Judge blasts Barr, Justice Dept. for ‘disingenuous’ handling of secret Trump obstruction memo]

The central document at issue is a March 2019 memo written by two senior Justice Department officials who argued that aside from important constitutional reasons not to accuse the president of a crime, the evidence gathered by Mueller’s team did not rise to the level of a prosecutable case, even if Trump were not president.

Portions of the memo that remain sealed contain brief factual and legal analyses of at least some of the incidents of possible obstruction that Mueller found. The memo concludes that each did not meet the threshold the Justice Department would need to file a criminal case, even if doing so had been possible, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the document is sealed. The analysis focused at least in part on the lack of a precedent for building an obstruction case around instances of the president using his executive power in ways that would normally be allowed, such as the firing of James B. Comey as FBI director in 2017, these people said.

Earlier this month, Jackson issued a scathing opinion saying that she had read the memo and that it showed Barr was disingenuous when he cited the document as key to his conclusion that Trump had not broken the law. On Tuesday, in response to the Justice Department’s filing overnight, Jackson ordered public release of the still-secret portions of her opinion.

“The suggestion that the Attorney General’s advisors were helping him make a decision about whether to initiate or decline a prosecution is contrary to the very memorandum at issue,” Jackson wrote in a newly unsealed section. “So why did the Attorney General’s advisors, at his request, create a memorandum that evaluated the prosecutive merit of the facts amassed by the Special Counsel? Lifting the curtain reveals the answer to that too: getting a jump on public relations.”

Jackson concludes that rather than weigh legal issues, the memo shows Barr’s Justice Department “was girding for a preemptive strike on the Mueller report instead.”...>

<....[Barr undercuts Mueller investigation as Trump cheers him on]

Justice Department lawyers had sought to ease the judge's anger by releasing part of the memo publicly, but not its detailed discussion of the evidence against Trump, saying they would ask an appeals court to keep that section secret.

“In retrospect, the government acknowledges that its briefs could have been clearer, and it deeply regrets the confusion that caused. But the government’s counsel and declarants did not intend to mislead the Court,” the Justice Department lawyers wrote in asking the judge to keep the rest of the document under seal while they appeal her ruling.

This fight over the document emerged out of a lawsuit filed by the watchdog group Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, whose president Noah Bookbinder said the department’s decision to appeal “is legally and factually wrong and that undercuts efforts to move past the abuses of the last administration.”

Parts of the memo released Monday night offer a clearer view into why the judge was angry — and they indicate the decision not to accuse Trump of a crime had been the subject of previous conversations among Justice Department leaders.

The memo written by Steven A. Engel, then head of the department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), and Edward O’Callaghan, then a senior department official closely involved in supervising the Mueller investigation, was addressed to Barr, then the attorney general.

“Over the course of the Special Counsel’s investigation, we have previously discussed these issues within the Department among ourselves, with the Deputy Attorney General, and with you since your appointment, as well as with the Special Counsel and his staff. Our conclusions are the product of those discussions, as well as our review of the Report,” the lawyers wrote in the newly public section.

[Mueller complained that Barr’s letter did not capture ‘context’ of special counsel’s Trump investigation]

For decades, Justice Department policy has held that sitting presidents could not be charged with a crime. But the memo to Barr went beyond that constitutional position, arguing “certain of the conduct examined by the Special Counsel could not, as a matter of law, support an obstruction charge under the circumstances. Accordingly, were there no constitutional barrier, we would recommend, under the Principles of Federal Prosecution, that you decline to commence such a prosecution.”

The memo also argued that the Justice Department should make a decision whether Trump broke the law — even though Mueller had very carefully avoided answering that question, citing Justice Department policy against charging a sitting president.

“The department should reach a conclusion on whether prosecution is warranted,” the memo said. “The department either brings charges or it does not … That principle does not change simply because the subject of the investigation is the president.”

For that reason, Engel and O’Callaghan urged Barr “to determine whether prosecution would be appropriate given the evidence recounted in the Special Counsel’s Report, the underlying law, and traditional principles of federal prosecution.”

David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official, said the portion of the memo unsealed so far shows “the integrity of this legal analysis is suspect,” noting it’s unusual for the Office of Legal Counsel to opine on whether evidence in a case is sufficient to launch a prosecution. Laufman also said the fact that O’Callaghan, a senior political appointee outside the OLC, helped write the memo “creates the impression that this was simply a results-oriented product intended to benefit President Trump.”

Barr ultimately made public arguments that closely tracked those in the memo.

<....Jackson’s opinion noted that Barr told Congress that he and his deputy reached the decision that Trump should not be charged “in consultation” with the Office of Legal Counsel and other department lawyers. Barr testified about the deliberations after Mueller wrote a private letter complaining to the attorney general that his description of Mueller’s report before its public release had led to misunderstandings about what the investigation found.

“The Attorney General’s characterization of what he’d hardly had time to skim, much less, study closely, prompted an immediate reaction, as politicians and pundits took to their microphones and Twitter feeds to decry what they feared was an attempt to hide the ball,” Jackson wrote.

The OLC is a critical but little-known part of the federal government, providing legal advice to presidents and their administrations. Democratic and Republican administrations often cite OLC memos as the legal justification for controversial policy decisions, but the contents of such memos are usually closely held secrets within the government.

In the case of the memo on whether Trump could be charged, the judge concluded that, rather than Barr following OLC advice, his decision and the memo “were being written by the very same people at the very same time,” working “hand in hand to craft the advice” that the office supposedly delivered to Barr.

“Not only was the Attorney General being disingenuous then, but DOJ has been disingenuous to this Court with respect to the existence of a decision-making process that should be shielded by the deliberative process privilege,” Jackson concluded, writing the memo “was expressly understood to be entirely hypothetical” and that prior redacted versions of the document “deliberately obscured this fundamental aspect of the exercise.”

The judge found that claims made by the department to try to shield the memo from public scrutiny “are so inconsistent with evidence in the record, they are not worthy of credence,” and said the department sought to “obfuscate” that it had set out to create a legal justification for a decision Justice Department leaders had already made — to not accuse the president of a crime.>

<The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does not seem to care much for the so-called "Law of Holes:" the adage that if you find yourself in one, stop digging. The live case study is the cascading economic coercive measures and barrage of insults it is leveling against Australia. Beijing's malice is proving that the Trump and Biden administrations got it right in identifying China as the comprehensive challenge of our times.

China is digging an Australia-sized hole for itself

Australia is showing that smaller allies have agency and it's no easy matter for China to permanently coerce democracies into subservience. But there is a long way to go. Australian determination to hold its ground and absorb pain is one thing - but Beijing will have others in its sights, and the test for America is to help its other allies and partners demonstrate the same resolve.

Since 2010, China has perpetrated at least 150 instances of economic coercion against countries and firms. More than half of these occurred over the past two years and most have been directed toward Australia. Why? Australia was a seemingly easy target: heavily reliant on exporting minerals, energy, and agricultural goods, with more than one third of every Australian export dollar earned in the Chinese market. This makes Australia the most China-reliant advanced economy in the world from a trading perspective.

China has imposed punitive measures against more than a dozen Australia sectors and has cost exporters billions in lost revenue. Beijing has also used a very different approach than the punishments dished out in the past against economies such as Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

While there was little doubt that previous measures were Chinese responses to policies taken by these countries against Beijing's wishes, the CCP nevertheless left itself room to deny there was any link between decisions made by these countries and the coercive measures. For example, rare earths restrictions were attributed to a Chinese decision to reduce the domestic processing of rare earths for environmental reasons. Boycotts against South Korean firms were said to be initiated by angry Chinese citizens rather than the regime.

This artifice allowed Beijing some degree of deniability - even if it was hardly plausible - and decreased the chances of a country attaining a favorable determination against China through World Trade Organization dispute mechanisms. The allegedly non-governmental basis for punishment also meant additional arbitrary measures could be added on, thereby creating a sense of heightened apprehension in that targeted country.

<....With the recent moves against Australia, Beijing changed the playbook. Many economic punishments were threatened by senior Chinese officials prior to implementation. The Chinese Embassy in Canberra even made the extraordinary decision last November to release a dossier of "Fourteen Grievances" against Canberra as a justification for these punitive measures, including predictable complaints about Australia's criticism of Chinese actions in the South China Sea and Taiwan.

Yet most of the grievances concerned domestic Australian policies and legislation such as local foreign investment decisions and banning Huawei from the 5G rollout. This confirmed that the CCP was taking revenge on Australia for refusing to give China the right to shape or veto Australia's domestic policy, and gainsaid the misapprehension that repairing the relationship with China only required Australia to allow China the strategic space in do what it wanted within its immediate periphery.

Beijing now finds itself in a bind.

An important element of its grand strategy is to dilute the strength of American alliances by compelling small and anxious states to accept a more accommodating stance towards China. The true menace of the Communist Party has been revealed to the world and hardened the resolve of the Australian politicians, business and social elites, and citizens to resist Beijing's terms, meaning the Australian political and psychological preparedness to absorb pain and disruption has increased. This is the opposite of what Chinese coercion is supposed to achieve.

One can take heart that Chinese attempts to groom - or else tame - Australia has failed, but Beijing is hoping the pain heaped on the country will weaken the will of other American allies and partners to show that same courage.

It is why America needs to not only stand by Australia but show it will do the same for others if they find themselves in a similar predicament. Doing that will ensure that the more Beijing lashes out, the deeper the hole it is digging for itself.>

<House Republican leaders on Tuesday broke nearly a week of silence about comments by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia comparing mask and vaccine mandates to the treatment of Jews by Nazis during the Holocaust, condemning her language but stopping short of punishing her.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s comments were an unwelcome distraction for Republicans as they sought to unify around a political message.

The slow response by Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, to Ms. Greene’s string of anti-Semitic statements reflected the reluctance of top Republicans to take on the first-term congresswoman, who had previously endorsed violent and racist conspiracy theories and whose combative style has made her a favorite of former President Donald J. Trump and his far-right supporters.

The Republicans’ reaction was a contrast to their swift ouster this month of Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, whom they forced from her leadership post after she enraged her colleagues by vocally repudiating Mr. Trump’s election lies.

Instead, Mr. McCarthy issued a sternly worded statement that rebuked Ms. Greene but also referred to “anti-Semitism on the rise in the Democrat Party” and made no mention of further consequences.

“Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust to wearing masks is appalling,” Mr. McCarthy said. “The Holocaust is the greatest atrocity committed in human history. The fact that this needs to be stated today is deeply troubling.”

His statement was quickly followed by condemnations by the other two top House leaders and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, who denounced Ms. Greene’s statements as “outrageous” and “reprehensible.”

The congresswoman’s latest remarks, in which she said that employer-mandated proof of vaccination was “just like the Nazis forced Jewish people to wear a gold star,” highlighted the political vise she has created for Republicans.

Stripped of her committees by Democrats and bringing in eye-popping fund-raising totals each time she stokes controversy, Ms. Greene appears to have grown emboldened to engage in increasingly brazen behavior, disdainful of her own party’s leaders and eager to capitalize on the next firestorm of her own making.

On Tuesday, just after Mr. McCarthy scolded her, Ms. Greene retweeted — and then quickly deleted — a post calling him a “moron” and “feckless,” using an expletive for emphasis.

Mr. McCarthy, who declined to strip Ms. Greene of her committee assignments for anti-Semitic and violent statements she made before she was elected, has remained loath to punish her since she came to Washington, in part for fear of elevating her platform and also to avoid alienating voters enthralled by her conspiratorial brand of politics.

In an interview with a conservative television host last week, Ms. Greene compared Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s insistence that lawmakers get vaccinated before removing the House’s mask mandate to how Jews were “put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany.”

In the past week, Ms. Greene has continued to equate universities’ barring unvaccinated students from attending classes in person to the Holocaust and referred to four progressive congresswomen — all women of color, two of whom are Muslim — as “the jihad squad,” equating their vocal critiques of Israel’s government and support for Palestinian rights to anti-Semitism and backing for Hamas.

Republicans on Tuesday quickly tried to shift attention from Ms. Greene’s comments to Democrats, whom they have tried to paint as insufficiently supportive of Israel, introducing resolutions in the House and Senate condemning anti-Semitism. But their job was made harder by the congresswoman, who refused to apologize for her comments and insisted that she had never compared mask mandates specifically to the Holocaust — “only the discrimination against Jews in the early Nazi years.”.....>

<....The condemnations by Republican leaders came after a rebuke from the Republican Jewish Coalition, a prominent organization whose political action committee contributes generously to the party. Matt Brooks, the executive director, called Ms. Greene “an embarrassment to yourself and the G.O.P.”

“Please educate yourself so that you can realize how absolutely wrong and inappropriate it is to compare proof of vaccination with the 6million Jews who were exterminated by Nazis,” he wrote on Twitter in response to one of Ms. Greene’s broadsides.

Still, in a reflection of how eager Republicans were to shift the unwelcome spotlight to Democrats, Mr. Brooks — who recently pinned a message on his Twitter feed imploring voters to remember in November that “there is only ONE pro-Israel party” — said in an interview that party leaders had responded appropriately to Ms. Greene’s comments.

“It’s immediately and strongly condemned by the House minority leader, the whip, the leadership and countless members of Congress who have called her out,” Mr. Brooks said.

“What that crystallizes is the stark contrast with the silence of Democrats,” he added, saying that House leaders including Ms. Pelosi had not pushed back on “dog whistles” being sounded by progressives.

Ms. Pelosi, in fact, called on Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, in 2019 to apologize for invoking anti-Semitic tropes in a series of tweets, including one from 2012 in which she wrote that Israel had “hypnotized the world” into ignoring their “evil deeds.” Ms. Omar apologized, but Republicans have since sought to paint some of her and other progressive lawmakers’ comments criticizing the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians as anti-Semitic.

On Tuesday, Ms. Pelosi called Ms. Greene’s most recent comments “beyond reprehensible” but sidestepped the question of whether she should be censured or expelled from Congress for them.

“I think she should stop talking,” Ms. Pelosi said.

Ms. Greene has a long history of bigoted and violent statements. Citing Mr. McCarthy’s refusal to act, Democrats moved to strip her committee assignments this year because of a series of social media posts she made before she was elected, in which she endorsed assassinating Ms. Pelosi. Ms. Greene was also a prolific writer for a now-defunct conspiracy blog, writing posts with headlines including “MUST READ — Democratic Party Involved With Child Sex, Satanism, and The Occult,” and arguing that the 2018 midterm elections — in which the first two Muslim women were elected to the House — were part of “an Islamic invasion of our government.”

She also suggested that a wildfire that ravaged California was started by “a laser” beamed from space and controlled by a prominent Jewish banking family.

Ms. Greene has only become more strident. Unmoored from the normal strictures of congressional committee work, she has railed against liberals and the so-called RINOs she sees leading her party in Mr. Trump’s absence on right-wing television and radio shows. She has held rallies with Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, who is being investigated by the Justice Department for alleged involvement with several young women who were recruited online for sex.

Representative Brad Schneider, Democrat of Illinois, introduced a resolution on Tuesday to censure Ms. Greene for her most recent remarks.

“Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene continues to debase not only the memory of 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, but all those who fought and died defending democracy against Hitler and his evil,” Mr. Schneider said in a statement. “It is shameful that the Republican conference continues to let her define their party, and dangerous that they refuse to expel her.”>

<U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is battling a major attack on his authority after the controversial strategist who masterminded his rise to power declared he is unfit to hold the job.

During almost seven hours of testimony in Parliament, Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings catalogued the government’s “disastrous” pandemic failures, saying the premier’s poor leadership led to thousands of unnecessary deaths.

Cummings’s intervention threatens to puncture the mood of optimism around Johnson’s administration flowing from the U.K.’s successful vaccination rollout and the reopening of the economy. His detailed account of the chaos around the prime minister and his errors in office also has the potential to damage Johnson’s standing among Tory members of Parliament at Westminster, whose support he relies upon to stay in power.

‘Very Bad’

“Tens of thousands of people died who didn’t need to die,” Cummings said in evidence to the House of Commons inquiry on the pandemic. “There is no doubt the prime minister made some very bad misjudgments and got some very serious things wrong.”

Asked directly whether Johnson is a fit and proper person to lead Britain out of the pandemic, Cummings replied: “No.”

The withering judgment from Cummings is particularly dangerous for the prime minister because the two worked so closely at the heart of government and during the 2016 Brexit referendum. It was Cummings who shaped that campaign, and then devised the Conservative Party’s winning general election strategy in 2019.

To be sure, there is no immediate electoral threat to Johnson, with a general election not due until 2024. Voters only this month endorsed the premier’s leadership, giving him a set of local victories, despite controversies in the weeks leading up to the polls.

Chaos

Yet political fortunes are fickle in the U.K. and Johnson must continue to retain the support of his party if he is to stay in 10 Downing Street. And though his backbenchers remain supportive for now, moods can quickly shift. In the House of Commons on Wednesday, Johnson denied that any mistakes he’d made led to excess deaths from the virus.

Among his many attacks on Johnson and the wider administration, Cummings said:

Johnson regretted ordering the U.K.’s first lockdown and repeatedly said he’d wished he’d been like the mayor in the movie “Jaws” who kept the beaches open despite the threat to public safety. After finally agreeing to impose a second lockdown in October 2020, following a delay that led to needless deaths, Johnson said he’d rather let the “bodies pile high” than agree to a third in the future. Johnson is overly obsessed with media coverage and too easily swayed by newspaper headlines. The prime minister’s fiancee, Carrie Symonds, has an excessive influence over the premier’s decision-making10 Downing Street is a place of “chaos,” an environment that Johnson actively cultivates to reinforce his own power

One of Cummings’s claims -- that more lives could have been saved if Johnson had imposed a second lockdown more quickly -- was backed up by scientist John Edmunds, who advises the British government on its pandemic response.

“We could have reduced the deaths in the autumn wave by a significant margin,” Edmunds said on ITV’s “Peston” program. “That autumn wave of course fuelled the next wave because we allowed another variant to escape and start to spread.”

A significant part of Cummings’s critique focused on current problems with Britain’s pandemic response, arguing that the country’s border policy is woefully inadequate and the British state is not prepared to deal with future crises. He lamented Johnson’s decision to delay a public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic, saying that lessons had to be learned now.

Cummings also repeatedly attacked Health Secretary Matt Hancock, saying he regularly lobbied Johnson to fire the minister for lying about the state of Britain’s pandemic preparedness and interfering with the establishment of an effective testing regime. The Department of Health rejected Cummings’s claims, and Hancock is due to host a government press conference Thursday.

A year ago, Cummings was at the center of his own storm, after driving his family more than 250 miles (400 kilometers) out of London, apparently ignoring his own government’s lockdown orders.

On Wednesday, he explained for the first time that this was not simply for childcare reasons, as he initially claimed, but because his family had faced death threats and they needed to flee for their own safety.>

<A yearbook’s take on Trump and the Capitol riots were so off-base that students got refunds

The second impeachment of former president Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol were among the major news-making events during the 2020-2021 school year, but you wouldn’t know it from the pages of the Lincoln Junior High School yearbook.

When yearbooks were distributed on Monday, several parents whose children attend the Bentonville, Ark., school raised concerns over factual inaccuracies that the principal later apologized for as “biased” and “political.”

A spokesperson for Lincoln Junior High declined to answer questions from The Washington Post about who wrote the yearbook captions, what the school’s vetting and oversight process is for yearbook content, or how many families complained.

In a Monday letter to families at the school, Principal Josh Thompson apologized for the content and said the mistakes do not represent the school’s values.

“Bentonville Schools strives to maintain neutrality when referencing political topics. Contrarily, the current events section of the yearbook contains inaccurate information along with images and captions that are both biased and political,” Thompson wrote.

Parents primarily objected to protests over George’s Floyd’s murder last May being contrasted with the Capitol siege, and a photo of a victorious-looking Trump that was accompanied by the inaccurate caption, “President Trump WAS NOT impeached.”

“You see the first picture of a mostly Caucasian crowd waving the flags in front of, obviously, a government building and the pictures entitled ‘Trump supporters protesting at the capitol,'” Yoni Warfield, a parent at LJHS told local station KNWA-TV on Monday. “Then you see a picture — a more violent looking picture — of a car flipped over, flames in the background, mostly people of color entitled, 'Black Lives Matter riots.’”

According to images of the “Current Events” section of the yearbook, one photo showed a crowd of mostly Black men next to an overturned car with a caption reading, “Black Lives Matter riots Started in Minneapolis in may of 2020.” A photo on the opposite page showed mostly White men surrounding the U.S. Capitol with the caption, “Trump supporters protesting at the capitol.”

In reality, Trump was impeached for a second time by the House of Representatives on Feb. 13. The Senate voted to acquit Trump by 57-43, falling 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority required for a conviction. Researchers have found that most of the uprisings after George Floyd’s murder were nonviolent (and that violence was usually perpetrated by counter protesters); and federal prosecutors have thus far filed more than 600 felony charges that include assault of an officer, conspiracy, trespassing and obstruction of an official proceeding in connection with the Capitol riot.

School’s closed, the year’s lost. But yearbook editors are not missing this deadline.

Objections to yearbook content aren’t unusual, but more often complaints deal with students, parents and school administrators clashing over free speech and boundaries of propriety rather than basic facts of history. Days before Lincoln Junior High’s yearbooks were released, a Florida high school angered students and parents by digitally altering photos of female students to hide their chest.

Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel for the Student Press Law Center, which represents students in free speech issues that arise from student-run publications like school newspapers and yearbooks, said the unusual nature of the past year is already presenting challenges, particularly when referencing issues like Black Lives Matter, the Capitol riot and coronavirus mask rules.

A high school edited yearbook photos to hide girls’ chests. Students and parents are furious.

“As I’ve been telling students and advisers that call to report these problems, the 2020-21 yearbooks they are publishing are not like most yearbooks, which tend to sit on bookshelves as the years pass, referenced only occasionally by their classmates,” Hiestand wrote in an email to The Post. “These yearbooks are part of a historical event. They capture a moment in time from a unique perspective that will likely be studied and examined for years to come.”

Lincoln Junior High’s principal said the administration will evaluate its vetting process for yearbook content and that the school would offer to refund the $35 cost of the yearbook.>

Last-ditch fight against Republican measures to restrict the vote:

<After a dramatic all-night debate, the Texas Senate approved one of the most restrictive voting bills in the country early Sunday on a party-line vote, despite emotional pleas from Democrats who likened the measure to the Jim Crow laws of the 20th century that effectively barred Black Americans from voting in Southern states.

The Republican-majority House was scheduled to take up the measure Sunday night, but late-in-the-day huddles between Republicans and Democrats reflected the depth of Democratic opposition to the measure and raised questions about whether they were planning to invoke procedural maneuvers to try to kill it. If the legislation passes, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is expected to sign it quickly.

Republicans had barreled forward with the bill and hashed out a final version behind closed doors late last week over the objections of civil rights leaders and business executives, who said the measure targets voters of color. President Biden on Saturday called it “wrong and un-American,” and Democrats vowed to immediately challenge it in court.

“Every American needs to be watching what’s happening in Texas right now,” Rep. Colin Allred (D-Tex.) said Sunday. “And we have to have a federal response to this because this has gone way too far.”

“This isn’t legislation,” he added. “This is discrimination.”

Democratic lawmakers urged Congress to pass federal voting rights legislation, which has been stalled in the Senate.

“This is a now-or-never moment in American democracy,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) said Sunday, adding: “If we don’t act now, then our democracy is not going to look the same either in 2022 or 2024.”

The Texas measure is the latest example of how Republican legislators around the country have pushed for new voting restrictions as former president Donald Trump has kept up a barrage of false attacks on the integrity of the 2020 election.

[How the new Texas voting bill would create hurdles for voters of color]

GOP lawmakers in Texas argued the bill is necessary to shore up voter trust, even though they have struggled to justify the need for stricter rules in the state, where officials said the 2020 election was secure.

Sen. Bryan Hughes (R), one of the sponsors of the measure, wrote on Twitter on Saturday that it “is a strong bill that gives accessibility & security to Texas elections.”

Senate Bill 7 imposes a raft of hurdles on casting ballots by mail and enhances civil and criminal penalties for election administrators, voters and those seeking to assist them.

The measure makes it illegal for election officials to send out unsolicited mail ballot applications, empowers partisan poll watchers and bans practices such as drop boxes and drive-through voting that were popularized in heavily Democratic Harris County last year. It bars early-voting hours on Sunday mornings, potentially hampering get-out-the-vote programs aimed at Black churchgoers.

In a last-minute addition, language was also inserted in the bill making it easier to overturn an election, no longer requiring evidence that fraud actually altered an outcome of a race but rather only that enough ballots were illegally cast that could have made a difference. The legislation also changes the legal standard for overturning an election from “reasonable doubt” to “preponderance of the evidence” — a much lower evidentiary bar.

[Texas Republicans finalize bill that would enact stiff new voting restrictions and make it easier to overturn election results]

The Senate debate lasted more than seven hours into early Sunday, as Democrats argued that the measure would create barriers for many voters of color.

One Black senator from Houston, Borris Miles (D), took issue with a provision requiring anyone who transports more than two voters to the polls to fill out a form, saying that many of the voters he represents lack transportation and get rides from other residents.

“You really have no idea and no realistic vision about how things work in my neighborhood and neighborhoods like mine,” he said during the overnight debate. “Everybody doesn’t have access to cars.”

Miles gestured to portraits of Confederate leaders hanging on the walls of the Senate chamber and asked, “Why are we allowing people to roll back the hands of time?”....>

<....The proposed voting hurdles come after the state logged record turnout in the 2020 election, including huge surges in early voting in cities including Austin and Houston.

One lawmaker accused Republican proponents of Senate Bill 7 of intentionally erecting barriers for voters in Harris County, home of Houston and an increasingly Democratic stronghold with a large minority population.

“Let’s talk about the elephant in the room,” said Sen. Carol Alvarado (D-Houston), according to Houston Chronicle reporter Jeremy Wallace, who chronicled the debate on Twitter through the night. “This is about Harris County.”

The bill broadly prohibits local election officials from altering election procedures without express legislative permission — a direct hit against Harris County, where election officials implemented various expansions last year to help voters cast ballots during the coronavirus pandemic. It also specifically targets some of those expansions, explicitly banning drive-through voting locations, temporary polling places in tents and 24-hour or late-night voting marathons.

Republican Sen. Paul Bettencourt of Houston defended the restrictions that will prevent Harris County from expanding voting access as it did in 2020, claiming without evidence that “drive-through voting didn’t work” and resulted in a 1.5 percent error rate.

Chris Hollins, who served as elections clerk in Harris County last year, disputed that claim.

“Drive-thru voting is safe, convenient, and secure for Texas voters. It worked so well in 2020 that nearly 1 in 10 in-person voters in Harris County cast their votes at drive-thrus,” he said in a text message.

“It’s a great service for Democratic and Republican voters, and everyone in between. Senator Bettencourt is not a fan because in 2020, too many of those voters were women and minorities.”....>

<....Republican sponsors of the bill dismissed the criticism.

“Senate Bill 7 is one of the most comprehensive and sensible election reform bills in Texas history,” Rep. Briscoe Cain (R) and Hughes said in a statement issued Friday evening. “There is nothing more foundational to this democracy and our state than the integrity of our elections.”

Cliff Albright, co-founder of the group Black Voters Matter, said such rhetoric mirrors the language used during the Jim Crow era to bar Black Americans from voting without explicitly stating that as the goal. He noted that an earlier version of the voting bill described the need to protect the “purity of the ballot box,” a phrase in the Texas Constitution. Similar language was used decades ago by white supremacists to limit Black voting.

“This bill is exactly in the Jim Crow tradition,” Albright said. “While not mentioning race, it is inarguably the case that these provisions are squarely aimed at Black and Brown voters.”

Critics also took aim at the process as much as the substance of Senate Bill 7, the details of which were hammered out behind closed doors. And they slammed Republican leaders for not appointing a single Black lawmaker to the negotiating team on a bill with major civil rights implications in a state with a long history of voting discrimination.

Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic election lawyer, promised to challenge the law in court quickly if Abbott signs it. He also noted that the measure’s restriction of early voting before 1 p.m. on Sundays is a direct assault on “souls to the polls,” the longtime get-out-the-vote effort that encourages Black voters to cast their ballots after church services.

Elias also accused business leaders of doing too little to block the bill.

“Can anyone send links to the statements about the new Texas bill from the 700 companies that said they were standing up against voter suppression?” Elias tweeted on Saturday. “Specifically, what steps they will take in Texas now?” The tweet also included images of crickets, denoting the business community’s silence in recent days about the Texas bill.

[As the voting rights fight moves to Texas, defiant Republicans test the resolve of corporations that oppose restrictions]

GOP lawmakers in dozens of states are pushing new voting measures in the name of election security, under intense pressure from supporters who echo Trump’s false claims of rampant fraud. States including Florida, Georgia, Iowa and Montana have passed measures that curtail voting access, imposing new restrictions on mail voting, the use of drop boxes and the ability to offer voters food or water while they wait in long lines.

During debate in the House earlier this month, Cain maintained that he was not backing a voter “suppression” bill but rather a voting “enhancement” bill, insisting that the measure was designed to protect “all voters.”

According to the final text approved Sunday, the Texas bill will:

● Impose state felony penalties on public officials who offer an application to vote by mail to someone who didn’t request it.

● Allow signatures on mail ballot applications to be compared with any signature on record, eliminating protections that the signature on file must be recent and that the application signature must be compared with at least two others on file to prevent the arbitrary rejection of ballots.

● Impose new identification requirements on those applying for mail ballots, in most cases requiring a driver’s license or ­Social Security number.

● Impose a civil fine of $1,000 a day for local election officials who do not maintain their voter rolls as required by law, and impose criminal penalties on election workers who obstruct poll watchers.

● Grant partisan poll watchers new access to watch all steps of the voting and counting process “near enough to see and hear the activity.”

● And require individuals to fill out a form if they plan to transport more than two nonrelatives to the polls, and expand the requirement that those assisting voters who need help must sign an oath attesting under penalty of perjury that the people they’re helping are eligible for assistance because of a disability and that they will not suggest for whom to vote.>

<....Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared in a tweet on Monday that he would suspend the pay of the Texas Legislature after state Democrats staged a walkout to prevent Republicans from passing restrictive voting legislation.

The Texas Constitution grants the governor the power to veto line items in bills and state budgets, giving Abbott the authority to unilaterally remove the Legislature's funding in the recently passed budget.

Abbott's potential veto comes after state Democrats collectively walked out of the chamber to ensure there wouldn't be the quorum of lawmakers necessary to vote on the legislation, a move that killed chances of the bill being passed before a midnight deadline....>

<Democrats are making Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) one of their main GOP foils heading into the 2022 midterms as they look to retain their slim majority in the House.

Greene has sparked new backlash in recent days over comments she made equating mask mandates to the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust, remarks that Democratic aides and strategists say will help them as they seek to paint the entire GOP as a party of right-wing conspiracy theorists.

"I think that she is providing a huge opportunity in the absence of Trump to be a sticking point and a foil for Democrats in campaigns," said Democratic pollster Molly Murphy. "All she stands for and represents is a walking depiction of where this Republican Party is going. And I think Democrats would be wise to invoke her and where she is trying to take that party."

The controversy surrounding Greene comes as Democrats craft a strategy on how to defend one of the narrowest House majorities in modern history.

The party controls the chamber by only a handful of seats and already finds itself facing both a redistricting process that is expected to give Republicans an advantage and a historical trend in which the party out of the White House gains seats in the first midterm of a new administration.

Democrats have already previewed a campaign strategy that focuses on the Biden administration's legislative efforts, including touting a sweeping coronavirus relief package that was signed into law earlier this year and proposals to implement trillions of dollars in infrastructure spending as well as expand the social safety net.

But House operatives are also planning to highlight controversial remarks Greene has made as well as Republicans' reluctance to issue any kind of formal punishment against her in Congress.

Murphy predicted that Greene would be featured in Democrats' paid advertising efforts as well as fundraising solicitations and could be used to knock other top Republicans.

"Democrats are going to run on popular legislation," added one top House aide, "and Republicans are just kind of disqualifying themselves."

"With Greene specifically, you see someone like [House Minority Leader] Kevin McCarthy [R-Calif.] just being unwilling and unable to rein her in or to stop her from consuming their caucus or really becoming a leader in it, which really does more to disqualify McCarthy and Republican leadership more than anything else," the aide added.

Greene most recently drew controversy this week when she likened mask mandates in Congress and across the country to the Holocaust - and then doubled down in the face of criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike. She was met with rebukes from House GOP leaders but is not expected to face any formal reprimand.

The Georgia lawmaker is no stranger to controversy, having found herself embroiled in a number of firestorms during her short House tenure.

Greene was voted off her committees earlier this year over past remarks from before her 2020 election that voiced support for the QAnon conspiracy theory and advocated for violence against Democrats.

She then sparked an uproar in Washington over a draft from her office regarding the formation of the "America First Caucus," which called for a "common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions."

Democrats face 'fish or cut bait' moment as hope wanes for working with Republicans

Besides those incidents, Greene has been a consistent proponent of the debunked theory that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" from former President Trump and has clashed with several House Democrats, most notably confronting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and heckling Rep. Marie Newman (D-Ill.) over her transgender daughter.

Greene's turn in the national spotlight coincides with Democrats' search for a new foil now that Trump is out of the White House and has lost his Twitter and Facebook bullhorns.

"I think that what makes this an effective line of attack is that this is not a big step away, this is just a continuation really of where Trump took them and where she and other right-wing extremists are trying to take the party," one Democratic strategist working on down-ballot races told The Hill. "She's just picking up the baton from Donald Trump."

The playbook mirrors one the GOP has used for years. Republicans for several cycles flooded the airwaves and social media with ads saying that people like Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Hillary Clinton and Ocasio-Cortez were running the party instead of Presidents Obama and Biden, who often had higher approval ratings than the GOP's foils....>

<....You need voters on Election Day to have a picture in their mind of who in Washington is going to be in charge, and I think Republicans always tried to do that," the strategist said. "It is not Kevin McCarthy. ... It's driven by Marjorie Taylor Greene, it's driven by a number of her colleagues and these people who are in the fringe."

When asked about the criticism and its effect on the midterms, Greene doubled down on her remarks, accusing Democrats of antisemitism over scattered criticism of Israel and denouncing mask mandates.

"Their attempts to shame, ostracize, and brand Americans who choose not to get vaccinated or wear a mask are reminiscent of the great tyrants of history who did the same to those who would not comply," she said in a statement. "I'm sorry some of my words make people uncomfortable, but this is what the American left is all about."

The National Republican Congressional Committee also swatted away the attacks, with spokesperson Mike Berg calling it part of Democrats' effort to "do and say anything to distract" from a "socialist agenda."

Still, Republicans voiced concern that Greene's numerous controversial comments could be a drag on the party in 2022.

"I'm a Republican, I'm not Jewish, I'm not a history buff, but every time I hear Marjorie Taylor Greene talk about the Holocaust, it's cringeworthy. And I think there are a lot of people out there as well that feel the same way," said Georgia-based GOP strategist Chip Lake.

"Six months ago, nobody heard of this representative, and now she's routinely leading national newscasts," Alex Conant, another Republican operative, added. "That's not great for Republicans trying to win the majority."

It's unclear that Greene will prove as effective a foil as Trump, Conant said. Despite her platform, Greene is a backbencher in the House, while Trump was president.

But still, she succeeded in recent days in monopolizing media coverage, forcing House GOP leadership to issue statements condemning her remarks while distancing themselves from questions over whether she should be removed from the House Republican Caucus.

Democrats say that dynamic in itself is valuable for them going into the midterms.

"That's the biggest problem that she's presenting for them ... she's distracting them from what an opposition party is normally trying to do," said a second Democratic strategist working on House races. "She absolutely cuts both ways in terms of generating fundraising and keeping the Democratic base riled up but then also preventing the guys on her side from mounting a coherent argument against Joe Biden."

While the attacks on Greene are sure to animate the party base, Democrats say they're waiting until next year to see how much swing voters are swayed by the broadsides.

But strategists say the attacks don't have to win over broad swaths of converts - they only have to convince enough undecided voters in enough House races to not vote Republican to have a shot at holding the chamber.

"Is she going to be a deciding issue for all of them? No," Democratic strategist Eddie Vale told The Hill, referencing swing voters.

"But they see the whole party turning away from them. And again, that's not going to be 100,000 people in a congressional district, but if that impacts 500 people in a district, that could swing it either way.">

<Republicans have spent nearly seven months making bogus charges of fraud in the 2020 election under the banner of “stop the steal.” Now they have segued into a “start the steal” offensive to ensure that they will win the 2022 and 2024 elections — even if most voters once again support the Democratic Party.

The Brennan Center for Justice reports that “between January 1 and May 14, 2021, at least 14 states enacted 22 new laws that restrict access to the vote” and “at least 61 bills with restrictive provisions are moving through 18 state legislatures.” Those bills are designed not to avert nonexistent voter fraud but to avert another election defeat for Republicans — and they are drawing perilously close to that goal.

In Georgia, for example, a new law stipulates that mobile voting stations “shall only be used in emergencies declared by the Governor,” who is a Republican. That will put out of business two “mobile voting units” — a.k.a. buses — that collected 11,200 ballots in Atlanta’s Fulton County in November. Also, under the new law, provisional ballots will no longer be accepted from voters who go to the wrong polling place; 11,120 provisional ballots were counted in November. “Combined,” writes my Post colleague David Weigel, “the ballots cast by both methods are nearly double the margin by which [Joe] Biden won Georgia.”

A new election law in Texas, which has been temporarily blocked by a walkout of Democrats from the state House, would outlaw many of the methods used to increase minority turnout, such as drive-through voting and early voting before 1 p.m. on Sundays (crimping “souls to the polls” events after church services). But the most alarming element of the bill is that it makes it easier to overturn election results even if there is no evidence that fraud affected the outcome....>

<...The Georgia law, for its part, includes a pernicious provision giving the Republican-controlled state legislature the right to suspend county election officials and to name the chair of the State Election Board. Previously, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had chaired the board, but he incurred Republican wrath by certifying Biden’s victory. Raffensperger is being challenged next year by a Donald Trump-endorsed opponent, Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), who insists that Trump would have won in Georgia if the election had been “fair.”

Meanwhile, in Arizona — another state Trump narrowly lost — Republicans are trying to strip Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) of her power to defend election lawsuits. They want to vest that authority in the Republican attorney general. If she runs again, Hobbs, like Raffensperger, will face an election challenge from an advocate of the “big lie.” Trump die-hards are also running for the secretary of state posts in Nevada and Michigan. If the challengers win, pro-Trump conspiracy theorists will be supervising elections in key swing states.

While GOP efforts are ultimately aimed at the 2024 election, they will first make their impact felt in 2022. Off-year elections are always tough for the party in power. This one will be tougher still because of Republican-driven voter suppression, reapportionment and gerrymandering. Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report writes that Republicans will have full authority to redraw 187 congressional districts, while Democrats will control just 75. He estimates that redistricting in just four states — Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina — could be enough to deliver the House to Republican control.

This brings us to a nightmare scenario: a Republican-controlled Congress overturning the 2024 presidential election results to install Trump or a Trump mini-me in the White House. In January, 139 House Republicans and eight Senate Republicans voted not to certify electoral college results in at least one state. Since then, the most prominent GOP opponent of the “big lie," Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), has been purged from the House leadership. Willingness to lie about election fraud has become a litmus test for Republicans, with the implicit threat of mob violence if they don’t go along. Republicans are so scared of Trump and his fanatical followers that most of them just voted against a bipartisan investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Many congressional Republicans will refuse to certify a 2024 Democratic win in swing states. If Republicans control Congress, they could deny the Democrats an electoral college majority and throw the election to the House — where each state delegation, regardless of population, would cast one ballot. Given that Republicans already control a majority of state delegations, they could override the election outcome. If that happens, it would spell the end of American democracy.

I hope I am being overly alarmist. I really do. But after the storming of the Capitol — and the Republican failure to hold the instigators to account — we have crossed a Rubicon. The best way to protect our electoral system is to pass the For the People Act, which would curb partisan gerrymandering and protect voting rights. Senate Democrats have to choose between saving the filibuster and saving democracy. They can’t do both>

<'I am not the one who is trying to undermine American democracy, I am the one who is trying to save it.'>

<Sen. Mitch McConnell asked GOP colleagues to block the January 6 commission as a "personal favor," CNN reported. McConnell announced his opposition to the bill last week, alongside other GOP lawmakers. In order to advance the bill, at least 10 Republican senators must support it.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell asked other GOP senators to vote against the January 6 commission as a "personal favor" to him, CNN reported Thursday.

Earlier this month, the House passed a bill to create a bipartisan commission that would investigate the January 6 insurrection. The bill has received pushback from Republicans, including McConnell, who announced his opposition to the commission on the Senate floor last week.

McConnell said the bill was "a purely political exercise" and accused Democrats of focusing on "things that occurred in the past."

CNN reported McConnell went further in denouncing the bill by reaching out to his Republican colleagues to block the 9/11-style commission, two lawmakers who McConnell contacted confirmed to CNN.

McConnell says Republicans ‘willing to listen’ about need for Jan. 6 commission

"No one can understand why Mitch is going to this extreme of asking for a 'personal favor' to kill the commission," one of the lawmakers told CNN.

Representatives for McConnell did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. An aide to McConnell told CNN he was unaware of the senator's private conversations but it does not differ from his public remarks denouncing the commission.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer pledged to "put the Jan. 6 commission legislation on the floor of the Senate for a vote," regardless of GOP opposition to the commission. In order to advance the bill, at least 10 Republican senators must support it.

So far, only three GOP senators have indicated they will cosign the legislation: Sens. Mitt Romney, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.>

<For more than two years, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., has been digging deep into the operations of former President Donald Trump's family business for possible fraud involving banks, insurance companies and taxing entities.

The New York prosecutor won a major, public victory in February when Trump's accounting firm was forced to turn over eight years of tax records as part of a protracted legal battle that ended at the Supreme Court.

This week, Vance's investigation appears to have entered a new and potentially ominous phase for the former president with the disclosure that a special grand jury has been convened to consider possible evidence of criminality by the president, his business associates or the company itself.

The move, first reported by The Washington Post, does not mean that criminal charges are assured or even imminent, but it marks a shift in the inquiry from a largely information-gathering stage to the presentment of possible evidence of criminal conduct. USA TODAY has not independently confirmed the The Post report.

What is Cy Vance investigating?

The Manhattan district attorney has been examining the far-flung Trump Organization's banking, tax and insurance transactions with a focus on whether the company manipulated property values to obtain favorable loans and reduced tax rates.

Prosecutors also have been weighing hush-money payments made to women on Trump's behalf and how that money was documented.

The original investigation began after Trump's former personal fixer Michael Cohen, who arranged the hush money payments, alleged in 2019 testimony to Congress that he and Trump repeatedly misled potential lenders and clients about the value of their properties and businesses in official documents.

Last week, New York Attorney General Letitia James, who had been conducting a civil investigation, announced that her office was joining forces with Vance, a move that not only will provide additional firepower, but also could broaden the existing investigation.

"We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the organization is no longer purely civil in nature," a spokesman for James said last week. "We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan (district attorney)."

Vance's office has declined to comment.

Here's what we know about NY state's criminal investigation of the Trump Organization

“These are all signs of an active criminal investigation where prosecutors believe they definitely got a basis to move forward. They’re taking the kind of steps to move forward to finish that investigation, finish gathering evidence, bring people in, put them under oath,” said Randall Eliason, a George Washington University professor and former federal prosecutor in Washington.

“He’s got (Trump’s) tax returns,” he said of Vance. “Trump’s not president anymore, and things are moving forward.”

The significance of a special grand jury

Convening a special grand jury suggests that Vance believes he’s seen enough evidence of a possible crime or crimes that he can present to the grand jury for further review.

“He wouldn’t take this step otherwise," Eliason said. "It certainly doesn’t indicate that charges are necessarily forthcoming, but he believes he’s got enough evidence to move forward to use a grand jury. The result of that process is whether to bring charges or not."

Prosecutors also use grand juries to gather additional evidence by subpoenaing additional documents and compelling witnesses to testify under oath.

A special grand jury provides continuity for prosecutors and a venue to present complex information over a longer period of time rather than presenting pieces of a case to different panels for consideration.

Adam S. Miller, a former deputy chief in the district attorney's Major Economic Crimes Bureau, said that while regular grand juries can consider up to eight to 10 cases a day, a special panel is traditionally limited in the number of investigations it considers.

"It's used mostly for larger white collar investigations," said Miller, who noted that he had no knowledge of district attorney's actions in the Trump case. "When you go to a grand jury with so much information, it's often necessary to silo their thoughts to one or two cases. It certainly isn't uncommon for a special grand jury to be seated, but it is not tantamount that an indictment will be sought'....>

<....Who could be called as witnesses?

Cohen, Trump's longtime personal attorney, already has acknowledged meeting with New York prosecutors multiple times in cooperation with their investigation.

Cohen told USA TODAY that he could not comment on any aspect of the case, citing the ongoing investigation and his potential role in it as a key witness for the prosecution. But he commented extensively on Twitter on how grand jury proceedings would amp up the investigation significantly.

“I am not surprised by this at all and have been steadfast in saying the wheels of justice turn slowly but they nevertheless turn,” Cohen said in one tweet shortly after The Post published its story. “No one is above the law!!!”

In another, Cohen said, “Each time #Trump makes the claim of a #PoliticalWitchHunt, I want to remind you of my testimony before the House Oversight Committee two years ago!” In that testimony Cohen called Trump a "racist," a "con man" and a "cheat."

Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges that included campaign-finance violations for paying hush money to women who claimed to have had sex with Trump and for lying to Congress, has repeatedly pointed to Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's longtime chief financial officer, as most knowledgeable of the former president's business operations.

Prosecutors already have sought Weisselberg's bank records, according to the New York Times, in what appears to be a bid to gain his cooperation.

Weisselberg's former daughter-in-law, Jennifer Weisselberg, also has confirmed that she turned over at least several boxes of financial documents obtained through her divorce from Weisselberg's son, and that she is a cooperating witness.

One of the biggest wild cards is what evidence Vance has, based on a review of millions of pages of Trump's tax documents, and what more he may be seeking, now along with the state attorney general.

Are Eric, Don Jr. or Ivanka Trump targets?

Grand jury proceedings are always shrouded in secrecy, and the district attorney's office has not commented. But legal analysts, including former top Justice Department lawyers, say Vance already has a significant amount of evidence to make a case against someone – whether that’s Trump, his chief financial officer or some other targets, including, potentially, Trump’s sons and daughter.

Prosecutors don’t convene such grand juries “without serious evidence” already, said Neal Katyal, the former acting U.S. Solicitor General and senior Justice Department official, who has been following the case closely.

But, Katyal added, “We don’t really know what evidence he has yet,” and what he is still seeking. Katyal noted that New York grand juries are limited in terms of hearsay evidence, which requires prosecutors to bring in witnesses to testify in person to make their case.

“We certainly know that the DA’s office has talked to Michael Cohen a number of times as well as Jennifer Weisselberg,” Katyal said.

Katyal and others said it’s too soon though to conclude that the district attorney's office is ready to seek indictments.

“That's putting the cart before the horse," he said. "First, they're going to get the information, and then they'll possibly act on it. I think it's important, before everyone says, ‘Oh, this means Trump is going to be indicted,’ that there are a bunch of different possible targets here, starting with Allen Weisselberg, the Trump children, and then perhaps Donald Trump himself.

“I think everyone should take a deep breath and time will tell,” Katyal said. “Let the prosecutors do their job, let the grand jury do its job and let’s not hyperventilate about what the result might be.”

Trump responds with familiar refrain: 'Witch hunt'

"This is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history," Trump said late Tuesday.

"This is purely political, and an affront to the almost 75 million voters who supported me in the Presidential Election, and it’s being driven by highly partisan Democrat prosecutors. New York City and State are suffering the highest crime rates in their history, and instead of going after murderers, drug dealers, human traffickers, and others, they come after Donald Trump.">

<A Cape Cod fisherman is recovering after miraculously emerging without serious injuries after spending nearly a minute in the maw of a humpback whale who mistook him for a snack.>

<Former President Trump, who previously claimed he was ?immune? to Covid-19 after contracting the virus last fall, was quietly vaccinated in January, a Trump representative confirmed to Forbes.

Both the former president and former first lady Melania Trump were vaccinated at the White House in January, according to the representative, confirming earlier reporting from Axios and The New York Times.

Trump was notably absent from the group of top elected officials who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine when it was first approved, including former Vice President Mike Pence and President Joe Biden.

Trump did not address the delay, but former Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams defended his decision, citing an experimental antibody treatment Trump had been given when he contracted the virus in October.

The former president?s office did not immediately respond to questions about why he hasn?t spoken publicly about getting the vaccine.>

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fo...

The anti-vaxxers still decrying the vaccine and yet their beloved leader took it and even encouraged them to take it.